The aftermath from these events was also considerable in the telecommunications infrastructure, as Tania Velázquez, Executive President of the Cuban Telecommunications Company, ETECSA, recalled in a recent exchange with the national press.

In the damage count, she mentioned how Hurricane Oscar in its passage through Guantánamo affected 8 thousand fixed telephone services by causing the fall of poles and cables, while technological premises were affected by major floods.

Mobile services also suffered severe damage, with 74% of radio base stations damaged.

When ETECSA workers were already beginning to erase these damages by joining forces with teams from different territories, the following month, in November, Hurricane Rafael mercilessly hit the provinces of Artemisa, Havana, and Mayabeque.

More than 540 radio base stations were reported in the west of the country without mobile service and more than 340 integral cabinets were affected. There were cuts in the optical fiber and several mobile telephone towers fell. At the same time, the number of fixed lines services affected exceeded 112,000.

The destructions caused by these natural phenomena were added to the effects derived from the interruptions of the National Electric System (NES). The most critical report of such damages was that 1,400 radio base stations were affected, equivalent to 60% of the total in the entire national territory. Also, more than 570 cabinets were reported damaged, which support thousands of fixed telephone services.

On top of all that, which impacted an infrastructure marked by technological obsolescence and by serious financial and resource deficiencies, they are added to damages totally unrelated to the will of nature.

These are acts of vandalism against telecommunications networks and also actions by third parties in public spaces, or burning of garbage near cabinets, poles, cables and other elements of the grid.

In this regard, Velázquez told the press that it was not only about vandalism, the intentional act of causing harm, but also “damage caused by third parties who are, let's say, working in a certain area and who, due to conditions that are not met, also affect our systems, cables, cabinets…”

He gave examples of “cabinets that have been completely torn off, sections of cables that have been left unfinished” in service to an entire community, and the population, the polyclinic, the school, the warehouse, everything nearby is affected.”

On the ETECSA profile on the social network X, company workers have denounced these events: “Cooperate and help us to help you. No to social indiscipline, do not make garbage dumps in our Installed Technology, take care of it so that your service will be better and longer lasting,” “Social indiscipline also harms our effort and our daily work to improve the service of our clients, “If you are a witness, inform us immediately through our service channels.”

The Executive President of ETECSA stressed that given the financial situation and the lack of resources the company shows fixing such damages becomes more complex and causes the restoration times to be longer.

Consequently, she called on the population to have “popular awareness” in the face of such acts, which harm the population, the company and the country.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff